TV Dinner, Maurizio Cannavacciuolo
A site-specific wall drawing
March 10-August 15

Cannavacciuolo began his residency at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in the fall of 2003. At that time he spent many hours with the collection and in the museum archives, exploring Isabella Stewart Gardner's rare book collection as well as her personal travel scrapbooks and guest books. Items of particular interest to him were photographed and set aside. He then returned to the museum in February 2004 and spent five weeks creating an elaborate two-part wall drawing in the special exhibition gallery — TV Dinner.

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Gondola Days: Isabella Stewart Gardner and the Palazzo Barbaro Circle
Gardner Museum: April 21 - August 15, 2004
Marciana Library, Venice: September 23 - December 9, 2004

The Grand Canal. Mrs. Gardner and John Singer Sargent. Henry James. James McNeill Whistler. Sexy gondoliers. Local color and cosmopolitan society. Dinner parties and Tableaux Vivants. Gliding on the waters, painting in the campos, searching out the Tintorettos and Carpaccios.

The Gardner Museum was inspired, at least in part, by Mrs. Gardner's experiences in that most exotic and evocative of Italian cities, La Serenissima - Venice. Come with us as we explore the city at the end of the nineteenth century and acquaint ourselves with a remarkable group of expatriate Americans and Europeans - artists, writers, patrons, poets, and musicians - for whom Venice became a second home. See their minglings and meetings, their work and their play, in paintings, drawings, books, letters, scrapbooks, and other memorabilia in this Centennial exhibition.

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Community Creations
Student Interpretations of the Gardner Museum
June 4 – June 13, 2004
FREE Opening Reception: Friday, June 4, 6 – 8 PM

“Community Creations” is an annual student art exhibition at the Gardner Museum that celebrates the collaboration between the museum and six community organizations in the Boston area. Students from these organizations participate in Community Partnership, a year-long multi-visit education program at the museum for local teens and younger children. An in-depth view of the museum’s collection gives the students the opportunity to learn the history and story behind the various art objects they observe and explore. Inspired by the Gardner Museum and its collection, the students create two-and three-dimensional works of art for this exhibition.

Students from the Alternative School at Little House, Hawthorne Youth and Community Center, Hyde Park YMCA, Mission Safe Program, Mother Caroline Academy and Roxbury Tenants of Harvard are participants in the exhibition.
The opening reception and celebration will be held on Friday, June 4, 2004 from 6:00-8:00 p.m. Please join us for a fun-filled evening of student gallery exhibitions, music, light refreshments and interactive activities for children and adults of all ages.

Off the Wall: New Perspectives on Early Italian Art at the Gardner Museum
October 6, 2004 -– January 9, 2005

While the Gardner Museum’s permanent collection is unchanging, our understanding of individual objects continues to evolve. This exhibition brings together works by Giotto, Giuliano da Rimini, and Fra Angelico — three of the Gardner’s most important early Italian paintings — for a new look at how they were understood by their original audiences and how we might make sense of them today. These masterpieces are considered from a variety of perspectives, including that of Renaissance artists and patrons as well as contemporary artists and collectors. Consideration is also given to how paintings possess their own history as physical, devotional, and aesthetic objects whose meanings can be revealed or obscured by art historians and conservators.